The California comeback, according to Paul Krugman

Songs of praise. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but Paul Krugman is singing paeans to California.

Headlined “Left Coast Rising,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist highlights California’s “modestly liberal agenda of higher taxes, spending increases and a rise in the minimum wage” as keys to its resurgence. Plus “enthusiastically” implementing Obamacare, and, oh, a budget surplus.

“So what do we learn from the California comeback? Mainly, that you should take anti-government propaganda with large helpings of salt,” Krugman concludes. We suspect contributors at another newspaper headquartered in New York might beg to differ.

Mission to Mexico. Gov. Jerry Brown will be spreading the good word south of the border next week. The aim of his trip to Mexico: “Boost bilateral trade and investment opportunities between the two neighbors and expand environmental and economic cooperation.”

State lawmakers, senior administration officials, a California Chamber of Commerce delegation and a host of business leaders, economic development, investment and policy wonks will be joining him. Brown has invited Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to meet later this year in California “to build on the partnership forged during the trade mission,” says his office.

That implies the governor will be returning with plenty of bacon from the country that is already California’s largest trading partner.

Sanctions and questions: It took the downing of a jet plane and the death of 278 mostly European citizens for the European Union to face what’s been going on beside its own backyard.

EU ambassadors have reached a preliminary agreement on “hard hitting” sanctions against Russia, with details “to be worked out,” reports Reuters. (Better hurry, the Russian military is now reportedly firing into eastern Ukraine)

Suggested measures include closing capital markets of the 28-member union to Russian state-owned banks, limits on the flow energy and dual-used technologies and an embargo on arms sales.

Well, it’s a start. Many European governments brushed off Russia’s annexation of Crimea “as long as the Russian money kept flowing into their economies,” notes a former Reuters Moscow correspondent in a Wall Street Journal op ed this week. But, the writer points out, the new sanctions are not enough. Given “the sly methods of offshore financiers, the Western financial system remains wide open. The longer we put that off, the deeper the cancer of dirty money will penetrate — and the harder cutting it out will become.”

Off the mark: Banana Republic is being greeted with some skepticism for branding some items in its new line of menswear fit for “The Startup Guy.”

Banana Republic is “using a very warped notion of Silicon Valley chic to sell beige fabric,” opines Valleywag. The San Francisco apparel company fails to understand that the fashion mandate in the Valley is to “dress every day like it’s the first day of 9th grade,” and where engineers still conflate Steve ‘Jobsian minimalism’ with ‘looking like garbage.'”

Not so, according to a “fashion psychologist” cited in Yahoo Finance, who says the startup look “will add a physical element of allure or ‘beauty,’ to compliment the entrepreneur’s brains.”

Salad days. Props to Wendy Chao at The Atlantic for her deep dive into the potato-salad-on-Kickstarter phenomenon.

Not only has the “jokey” venture raised more than $50,000 so far, but the lion’s share is coming from well-heeled givers , in the $35-$50 dollar range, with some donating $110 and more. “A set of 555 hardcore potato salad enthusiasts had the biggest financial impact on the campaign,” Chao finds, and has charts to prove it.